The Supply of Physicians

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, in a report on legal education in the United States, offers some interesting statistics based on the census returns of 1920 concerning the supply of physicians, clergymen and lawyers in the United States. According to the census reports, in 1920 there were 164,781 physicians, 168,348 clergymen and 132,590 lawyers. Incidentally, the figures for physicians included 14,774 nondescript healers and 5,030 osteopaths; the figures for clergymen included 14,078 religious and charity workers, and the figures for lawyers included 10,071 judges, justices, magistrates, abstracters, notaries and justices of the peace. An analysis of the figures in comparison with those of preceding decades shows a 4.3 per cent. increase in physicians; 25.6 per cent. increase in clergymen, and 8.5 per cent. increase in lawyers. There has been a progressive decline in the numbers of all three professions in proportion to the population since 1880, most marked in the case of physicians, who, during the last decade, increased in number less than one-third as fast as the population in spite of the fact that healers and osteopaths are included. Clergymen have increased substantially, and in 1920, for the first time, clergymen outnumbered even physicians.